The Land of the Night Sun: Book One of The Jade Necklace

by Ian Gibson

  “The gods grace us with a beautiful morning,” says a middle-aged woman as Itzel passes her. She’s wearing a face whose cheeriness is matched by her brightly coloured huipil—a square garment over the shoulders that many of the women in Itzel’s grandmother’s village also wear. She’s sweeping some of the excess water outside her hut into the ditch. “The mornings just after a storm are the most beautiful of all, don’t you think?”

  Itzel bows her head to her, taken aback by her positivity. Between her and the farmer’s family she met last “night-day”, she’s starting to think that dead people try very hard to see the brighter side of the afterlife, despite being caught in the middle of two angry gods that beset them with storms and earthquakes.

  The woman notices the rain cloud hovering near Itzel. “I see the gods have graced you especially! Is that a gift from the great and slimy Chaac?”

  Itzel stifles a laugh. “Does everyone really call him ‘the great and slimy’?” She finds it an odd way to speak of a god, even if in Chaac’s case it’s very accurate, because he was indeed very slimy.

  The woman nods and looks to Lady Chel’s hut. “The three gods who live among us on this island are Lady Chel the Gentle, Itzamna the All-knowing, and their daughter Lady Ixim the Bountiful. And then you have the god-king Kukulkan the Watchful, the storm-bringer Hurakan the Graceful, the earth-shaker Cabrakan the Strong, and—”

  “And Chaac is the… Slimy?”

  The woman smiles. “He was once Chaac the Life-giving, but the gods deemed that he would be called ‘Chaac the Slimy’ instead.”

  “Why?” Itzel asks.

  The woman shrugs. “We do not question the gods in their infinite wisdom. Whatever they deem fitting, be it a blessing or punishment, is considered a great honour.”

  Itzel doesn’t think it sounds like much of an honour, and she’s beginning to suspect that the gods decided to call him that just to tease him and amuse themselves. She remembers Chaac crying about being called names when Kinich Ahau shouted at him. Maybe the gods have a long history of teasing him? She looks through the woman’s open doorway and sees another, older woman inside the hut stitching together a huipil with colourful zigzag patterns. “Have either of you seen a coati around here?” she asks them.

  But both women shake their heads.

  “You’re looking for a coati?” the middle-aged woman asks. “Poor child, have you had something stolen?”

  A younger man kneeling on the roof of the hut next to theirs overhears them. “We haven’t seen any coatis in this city for a long time. They’re not allowed here anymore. They have a... history. They went on a stealing spree long ago, so the city guards are always on the lookout for any coatis who try to sneak into the city. Do you know one stole my favourite bowl?” He sighs dejectedly. “I really miss that bowl.”

  Itzel thanks them all and waves farewell. She’s not all that surprised that coatis have been banned from this city. Quashy must have earned himself quite a bad reputation here, if he’s been up to his thieving antics for some time.

  “I like the flower in your hair, by the way,” the woman with the broom says, then turns to the older woman sitting in the hut. “Doesn’t she look like a forest spirit?”

  “That she does!” the older woman says. “Strange stick she’s carrying though.”

  Itzel continues down the road to where she sees more people gathered at a street market along a wide, white avenue. She’s worried that with so many people out, they would have found Quashy long before she has, and who knows what they would have done to him if they did.

  “Quashy!” she shouts into the street, although she can’t imagine he would reveal himself even if he could hear her, what with being banished from this place. She looks closely down narrow alleyways for any sign of a brown-and-white ringed tail. She notices a fire on one of the roofs of the huts—it must have happened from the flames that the frightening storm had carried.

  “Have you lost someone in the storm?” a boy asks. He’s walking at a brisk pace carrying a bucket of water that is clearly too heavy for him, and she guesses he’s on his way to help douse out the fire.

  “Yes,” Itzel tells him. “His name is Quashy.”

  The boy continues onward towards the fire, wobbling around with his bucket and screaming, “Quaaaaashyyyyy! You have a weird name, Quaaaaashyyyyy!”

  An old man walks to her and asks, “What does your friend look like?”

  Itzel hesitates, as she’s not sure if she should be asking anyone to look for a coati anymore, given their ill repute here. “He’s… umm…” She pauses, as the only thing that comes to mind is his most obvious feature—his long, furry ringed tail—but mentioning that would most assuredly give away the fact that her friend is a coatimundi.

  The old man scratches his head. “Do you not know what your friend looks like?”

  Itzel smiles nervously. “It’s okay, I’ll try to find him myself, but thanks anyway!” she says as she walks away.

  The rain cloud follows closely above and behind her, and the sight of it attracts many puzzled looks from passers-by. She hears several of them whispering:

  “Isn’t that a rain-bringer’s cloud?”—“I haven’t seen one of those in forever.”—“Why is it here?”—“The last thing we need is more rain!”—“Maybe the Rain god sent it as a messenger?”—“Does he need a messenger just to tell us that he wants more food? He always wants more food!”

  Itzel turns to her little cloud companion. “I could really use some help finding my friend, rain cloud. You remember what he looks like. Is there any chance you can help me?”

  The rain cloud ascends high above the rooftops to get a better view, and drifts down the street towards the white avenue. Itzel follows where it’s going as it turns and quickly dips down into an alleyway. She runs around the corner and finds it hovering above one of several urns placed outside one of the homes. She looks inside the urn, and to her surprise, she finds Quashy curled up inside. He’s breathing weakly and looks like he’s very badly hurt.

  “Oh Quashy, what happened to you?” she whispers to him, but there’s no response. She looks around—there are too many people on the street, and she doesn’t want to take the whole urn with her in case she’s accused of theft, so she has no choice. She holds up her snake-stick and places the bottom of it in the urn, and gently taps Quashy’s body with it, transforming him into a small snake again. She hopes he won’t get mad that Mister Scales has made a reappearance, but it’s for his own good.

  “I wouldn’t have found him without your help, rain cloud. Thanks!” she tells the little cloud.

  The cloud rumbles softly, which she assumes to be cloud-speak for “you’re welcome”.

  She picks Mister Scales up and carries him back down the street to Lady Chel’s hut, in hopes that she’ll be able to treat him the way she treated her. The city dwellers see her carrying the small snake, and some bow their heads.

  “The watchful Kukulkan smiles upon you,” a few of them say as she passes.

  Itzel’s thinking that snakes are probably highly revered in this city, since the king of the gods takes the form of one. She whispers to the snake, “It looks like Mister Scales is a lot more popular here than Quashy.” When she arrives at Lady Chel’s hut, she remembers to take her sandals off, places them beside the doorway, asks the rain cloud to wait outside for her, and steps inside.

  The old woman is shearing the trees that have grown in the middle of her hut thanks to the rain cloud sneezing out some of her precious pollen.

  “Hello again, miss plant lady!”

  “My name is Lady Chel,” the old woman says with her back to Itzel.

  “Sorry, Lady Chel! I’m not very good with remembering names. Can you treat my friend? He’s very badly hurt.”

  The old woman turns around and looks at the snake in Itzel’s hands. “Your friend is a snake?”

  “Actually, he isn’t.” She’s reluctant to transform him back into a coati, but she understands it might
be important for him to be in his true form if Lady Chel is to treat him properly. “Can you keep a secret?” she asks.

  The old woman nods. “I am the medicine goddess. All that concerns me is treating the wounded, and that those I treat repay their debts.”

  Itzel taps the snake with her snake-stick, and the snake’s body fluffs up into a coati with a long ringed tail dangling from it. Quashy is still motionless aside from his weak breathing. Itzel carries him to the old woman, who places down her shears.

  “He’s missing his arms and legs,” Lady Chel says as she inspects him with her long, wooden fingers that look like little branches.

  “He’s been like that since I’ve known him.”

  Lady Chel continues, “And he has a few broken bones. The winds must have battered him badly.”

  Itzel lowers her head, feeling regret, as Quashy had just been trying to help her.

  Lady Chel picks up the coati and takes him to a table. “You can leave him with me. Mending the broken bones will be quick, but I’m afraid I don’t tend to keep spare coati limbs.”

  “I understand.” Itzel didn’t expect him to get his arms and legs back anyway, although that would have been a pleasant surprise for him. If he can at least be treated for his injuries from the storm, she’ll be happy. “Can I come back later today, then? I just need to look around the city for someone, and then my friend and I will go to the rainforest with the rain cloud.”

  “Whom are you looking for?” Lady Chel asks, her back turned to her as she tends to the injured coati.

  “My grandmother. I think she’s somewhere in this city.”

  “If you don’t know where she is, then I’m afraid you’ll be spending much longer than a day here. It’s a fairly big city, after all. It’s better that you find Lord Itzamna. He’s the god of knowledge, and he keeps a record of everyone who has come to the City of the Dead.” She turns to face Itzel and points in the direction that would take her to the white avenue at the end of the street. “He lives on the other side of the city, across from the central plaza. If your grandmother is here, he’ll know. He claims to know everything.” Her wooden brows crease and crack. “Except that he has a wife, apparently. He’s my husband.” She turns back to the coati and vines start to grow from her fingers, wrapping around his body. "Your coati friend will be safe with me, if you want to find him and ask him about your grandmother.”

  “Thank you so much, Lady Chel.” Itzel looks at Quashy lying on the table, his eyes closed and mouth open. “I’ll be back for you, Quashy,” she whispers. “I promise.”

  She’s about to step outside, but the old woman tells her, “By the way, I had forgotten to tell you earlier—I suppose I was too distracted by all the trees growing inside my hut—but you might want to hide that jade stone around your neck. I’m not sure how you got it, but it looks an awful lot like the one they used to keep in the temple here long ago. They’ll start to ask questions.”

  Itzel checks that her necklace is safely tucked inside her dress. It’s no surprise to her that Lady Chel commented on it, as she had clearly taken it off when treating her.

  “Fortunately for you, any discussion between a patient and me is kept strictly within the confines of this hut,” Lady Chel assures her. “I can’t necessarily say the same for my husband, so it’s better that he not see it.”

  Itzel bows her head, leaves the hut, and puts her sandals back on. “Let’s go, rain cloud.”

  She walks towards the wide white avenue with a bustling crowd at its street market. Just before she reaches the corner to climb the steps to the avenue, she walks past a hut with wisps of smoke drifting from its doorway. At first, she wonders if there’s a fire inside, so she peeks through the entrance. She sees an old man with a headdress of feathers sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, and the air in his room is thick with smoke, steam, and incense burning in clay pots placed all around him. She suspects this old man might be the one Lady Chel was referring to. She knocks on the doorway, and the old man raises his head and beckons her with his hand to come in.

  “Just wait here,” Itzel asks the rain cloud. “Hopefully this will be quick.” She walks into the smoky room and has to flap her hand to clear the smoke from her eyes. “Are you Itzamna?” she asks him.

  The old man laughs, baring many teeth that have been fixed with jewels—or at least the ones that aren’t missing entirely. "Such high praise to be mistaken for the god of knowledge himself!"

  “Oh, sorry to bother you,” Itzel says, bowing her head and turning to leave.

  But the old man beckons her inside insistently. "Please, spare me just a moment of your busy morning, child, and take a seat. I'm not the god of knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I don't know things worth sharing. I am a seer that serves the gods. They call me the Daykeeper, the Mother-Father of the Dead. And what do they call you?”

  “Just Itzel,” she says reservedly.

  “Speak with me, Just Itzel,” the Daykeeper says with a chuckle, gesturing for her to sit opposite him. “If you seek the god of knowledge, you must have questions. Perhaps I can answer a few of them for you. After all, the great and all-knowing Itzamna is a very busy god, and his time is far more precious than mine.”

  Itzel sits on the floor and places her snake-stick down beside her. The Daykeeper has a bag of red seeds beside him, as well as something that looks like a wooden staff, and she wonders if it could be magical like hers. Between them there’s a round slab of stone with many glyphs carved into it and arranged in concentric circles like an elaborate dial. She notices that a lot of the glyphs look like depictions of animals, among which she can identify a monkey, lizard, snake, vulture, rabbit, eagle, and the one right in front of her just so happens to be her favourite—a jaguar.

  He draws a deep breath and stares at her. He looks more like a statue than a person, as his face is decorated in tattoos and piercings, most notably a large lip-plug of stone that hangs below his bottom lip—it looks so heavy that Itzel wonders if he can even close his mouth properly. "You look new,” he says after a solemn pause. “I can tell."

  She quietly nods.

  The Daykeeper smiles. "Don't be shy. I've greeted so many newcomers I've long since given up counting. Though we won't get so many as we used to."

  Itzel wonders why that is. "But I thought all the dead come here?"

  The Daykeeper says, "All the dead who come to Xibalba come to our great city. But that is not to say that all the dead come to Xibalba. Our land is vast, but it is just an island in a white, horizonless sea of nothingness. I expect there are other islands like ours in that sea, but it's not a sea that can be crossed. Our only bridge to another world is through the cenotes."

  She’s reminded of when she saw her grandmother falling through the cenote outside her village. “And those who fall through a cenote would come here, right?”

  The Daykeeper nods. “Xibalba lies at the bottom of every cenote in the Middleworld.”

  “Where’s the Middleworld?”

  The Daykeeper points upward. “The world from which you have just come, child. The land of the living.” He points downward to the floor. “Xibalba lies below it.” Then he raises his arm far upward, stretching it as he points to the ceiling. “And the Upperworld of the heavens lies above. It is said that a long time ago, we in the Underworld had a direct link to the Upperworld, too, through the ceiba tree whose roots grew in the centre of Xibalba, on the very same sacred ground on which you and I are sitting. They called it the Yaxche—the World Tree. This tree dug its roots deep into the Underworld yet grew so tall that its trunk stretched through the land of the living, and its branches reached all the way into the heavens. It was an ancient, mighty, sacred tree that was the very axis of the sky and earth, but when the Death god battled against his fellow gods to conquer them, he ordered his armies of the dead to cut down the Yaxche. All that’s left of the tree that bridged our worlds is one of its seedlings, which grew tall above our rainforest.”

  “So tha
t's the huge ceiba tree I saw above the forest fire?” Itzel asks.

  The Daykeeper nods. “We call that one the ‘Mother of Trees’, as it gave birth to all of Xibalba’s trees. Tall as it may be, it’s just a sapling compared to the Yaxche that once took root right here. When they cut down the World Tree, they used its wood to build much of this great city, and when its roots ripped up the depths of the earth as it fell, it unearthed the stone with which they built the pyramid that we call the Temple of the Sky—no doubt you've seen it, as it's hard to miss. The Death god ordered that such a temple be built in the World Tree's place, so the dead could gather there to worship him and the other gods. But that was long ago. So long ago, in fact, that not a single one of us city dwellers was around back then to have seen it ourselves, save for the Dead Queen.” As he says this, the Daykeeper bows his head to honour his queen.

  “There’s a queen here?”

  “You’ll no doubt see her too—like the temple, she’ll be hard to miss! She’s been around so long that even the gods admitted her into their council—the only human to have ever been granted such an honour. Can you believe that? A human who can stand beside the gods themselves! She’s even older than the twin gods of the Sun and...” He trails off into a solemn silence before finishing his sentence.

  “Moon?” Itzel asks.

  “Yes, our beloved goddess of the Moon. She disappeared a long time ago.” The Daykeeper closes his eyes. “May she be well, wherever she is. Even if she now lies in her grave amongst the stars.” He opens his eyes again, and the smile returns to his face. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is our Dead Queen is very, very old! Just in case you think I’m old.” He laughs hoarsely, almost looking like he’s about to cough up the jewels in his teeth.

  “Why aren’t there many others as old as this queen? I thought all of you are around forever.”